My NEW RIG!!!

[TRDCorolla1]

THe main thing with SLi is the cross GPU support. Games are slowly in the process of being coded to take advantage of this technology and the more RAM and higher clocks, the better. It may seem a little "overkill" right now or for a majority of things that are out, but in a year, that baby will become mainstream. So I would get whatever you can afford. If it was me right now, at this very moment in which I am in a building process, I would buy a single 7800GTX 256MB and wait to get more money to buy a second one. I don't have that kind of money where I can pay for the 512MB version right away. Plus, you get shared GPU support that way so you're bound to have the same or better setup than having a single 7800GTX 512MB. Unless you plan on SLi'ing the 512MB version. EXPENSIVE.

SLi x16 is standard for graphics port and you really can't avoid it. All new motherboards with the nforce4 support should have it and it's becoming the industry standard now. You must have it for performance. It will get better and better in the future.

 

[EricM]

Does that DFI MOBO i am going with have it? Because I went on nvidias site and for certified SLI X16 mobos it only had 2 one which was the asus. My original plan for the gpu was the same as yours. Buy one 7800gtx 256mb and wait a while till prices go down and games get more advanced and add the second. But that will still probably be more expensive then 1 single 512... And SLIing 2 512's ... you may as well build a second computer for that price.... the evga 7800gtx is like 850CDN so two of those would add up to 1600 plus tax... wow...So i think its going to be dual 256s ....

 

[TRDCorolla1]

Yeah, you'll have plenty of processing power for games. Make sure you have a good CPU too to power that thing. The DFI LanParty mobo you picked out should be SLi certified if it has 2 slots using PCI-e x16. Nvidia probably tested those specific two boards for their SLi support, but any motherboard with 2 PCI-e x16 slots will take SLi.

 

[EricM]

I am not sure if we are talking about the same thing here... if you go to the sli site... www.slizone.com and check out the sli certified page under mobos it has nvidia nforce4 slix16 certified mobos and it just lists the asus A8N32-SLI deluxe and then it has the SLI certified mobos which is everything else.... And heres what it says on asus' page for the A8N32-SLI deluxe...

True Dual X16 SLI - The ultimate enthusiast platform
The A8N32-SLI Deluxe supports dual PCI Express x16 slots running at full speed to liberate graphics cards from the narrow bandwidth platform of x8 speed only. With ASUS' innovative designs to bring out the real potential of NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 chipsets, gamers can easily enjoy faster graphics performance and higher video quality today, and be ready for the even more demanding tasks of tomorrow!

And for the CPU...i am going with the x2 4400 .. so wouldnt that be a very good cpu?????

 

[alvino]

The X2 4400+ should be fine.

 

[TRDCorolla1]

Yeah, that CPU is fine. I didn't scroll up to the top to see what you have. There are so many people with build questions, I lost track who's who. So according to that, most SLi boards are running at 8x instead of 16x? That's odd. That's just mislabeling info. PCI express 16x is meant to run at the full 16x. The game is the only limiting factor then.

Go here and scroll down a bit. There are tons of motherboards nvidia supports. I still feel that DFI board will do an excellent job:

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone2_build.html

Nvidia need to update their site.

 

[alvino]

Yeah, you didn't know that? Originally, when SLI came out, it split both PCI-E slots, so each was x8 instead of x16. nVIDIA recently came out with a revision so that both PCI-E slots were x16 each.

Anandtech.com has a preview for ATI's Dual x16 CrossFire. I'm sure ATI won't let nVIDIA reap the rewards this time

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2609

 

[EricM]

Yea I have been there and I read all that I still am going with the DFI board but I just wanted to know what that x16 meant. I thought i read somewhere that two cards in SLI only run at 8x each...?

EDIT: alvino posted at the same time as me ... so are u saying most sli boards out there split up the cards into 8x each and SLIX16 runs both cards at 16x??? So the only board for amd cpus that uses the x16 each is the asus a8n32 board?

 

[TRDCorolla1]

16x means it has a peak bandwidth in duplex mode (back and forth) of a whopping 8GB/s (peak). FAST...

 

[EricM]

Ok since we are all posting at the same time Ill repost my question... so are u saying most sli boards out there split up the cards into 8x each and SLIX16 runs both cards at 16x??? So the only board for amd cpus that uses the x16 each is the asus a8n32 board? I am a bit confused now...